ole world to
themselves. Both modes of procedure have Scriptural warrant: for some
of the prophets narrate their calls, and others do not.

If these calls of distinguished men to God's service be noted one by
one, they will be found to include many of the grandest scenes of
Scripture.[7] There could be no more splendid subject--if I may give
the hint in passing--for a course of lectures in the congregation, or
even for a course, like the present, to students of divinity.

They exhibit astonishing variety. Moses, for example, was called in
the maturity of his powers, but Samuel when he was still a child.
Jeremiah's call bears a certain resemblance to that of Moses, because
both resisted the Divine will through inability to speak; but in other
respects they are totally dissimilar. Ezekiel's stands altogether by
itself, and is extremely difficult to unravel; but it is thoroughly
characteristic of his sublime and intricate genius. Nowhere else could
there be found a more telling illustration of the diversity of
operation in which the Spirit of God delights, when He is touching the
spirit of man, even if He is aiming at identical results.

For in all cases the effect was the same. The man who was called to be
a prophet was separated by this summons from all other occupations
which could interfere with the service for which God had designated
him. His whole being was taken possession of for the Divine purposes
and subjected to the sway of the Divine inspiration. One of the
commonest names of a prophet in the Old Testament is "a man of God."
Through constant use this term has lost its meaning for us. But it
meant exactly what it said: that the prophet was not his own, but
God's man; he belonged to God, who could send him wherever He wished
and do with him whatever He would. It was the same idea that St. Paul
expressed, when he called himself, as he loved to do, "the slave of
Jesus Christ."

It has sometimes been attempted to explain these scenes away, as if
they were not records of actual experience, but only poetic
representations which the prophets prefixed to their writings, to
afford their readers a dramatic prefigurement of the general scope of
their prophecies, ideas being freely put into them which the prophets
did not themselves possess at the commencement of their career, but
only acquired by degrees as their life proceeded.[8] They are compared
to such efforts of the poet as the _Vision_ of Robert Burns, in which